Woodsman Craft Week

Spend the week in the woods weaving, carving and crafting utensils, cups and containers from natural materials. Each day you will be introduced to a new craft and gather the raw materials needed to make the craft item. Our expert instructors will take you through how to use the various woodsman tools such as axes, draw knives, gouges and carving knives that make crafting these items possible.

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Further Information

Locations

This course is run from our Wiltshire and Gloucestershire sites. Full details of how to get to the site will be provided once you have booked.

Catering

All meals for this course will be provided, allowing each student the opportunity to do some bushcraft cooking over an open fire. We have a kettle always on the go so you can help yourself to tea, coffee, squash and biscuits. We also have fresh drinking water and a fruit bowl available.

Minimum Age

We would advise that this course is suitable for 16 years old and upwards, under 18’s must be accompanied by a paying adult.

- David

- Patrick

- Kimi

“Just wanted to say what an excellent time we all had and all thouroughly enjoyed all aspects of it. I have already been reccomending your services to family and friends, and I’m sure us chaps shall be back spring time next year to try another of your courses!”

- Sam

“Interesting and informative, will try some of the ingredients again. Enjoyed the pigeon prep as well”

- Andy

“Excellent day out, well organised, extremely well explained and very enjoyable. I’ll never look at the countryside the same again”

- Simon and Naomi

“Excellent fun, lots of ‘hands on’ and a really good knowledge base, Thanks.

- Grant and Jenny

“I thoroughly enjoyed the Hands on bushcraft butchery day, there are not many people who do this in the UK and I was pleased that the tuition was excellent, facilities good and plenty of hands on butchery to really master the techniques”.

- Andy

“Just wanted to say thanks Adam and Ellie for a great day today. I will be recommending your courses far and wide – I thoroughly enjoyed it!”.

- Jem

“Fantastic Experience – I’d highly recommend this to anyone who’s keen for an outdoor experience. Our guides Adam and Ellie were extremely knowledgable, patient and most importantly a lot of fun to be around. Overall it was a brilliant trip and I’ve got a lot great memories from it”.

- Adam C

“Fantastic Stag Weekend, I organised a stag weekend in the ‘wild’ for a small group of us and I can say that it thoroughly hit the mark. Adam and Ellie were great guides and hosts, joining in with banter and also leaving us to ourselves with just the right balance. We learned to strip down a pigeon and a rabbit with our bare hands, build fire from scratch, and spent a night under the stars in our self-constructed woodland castle. Passing a bottle round the fire and feeling unjustifiably proud of our newfound man-skills was the perfect alternative stag do. Full marks all round – I would thoroughly recommend this to other like-minded groups”.

- Duncan L

“Just spent a fantastic day with Adam and Ellie on one of their courses at Swindon. Both of us really enjoyed the day and learn lots of new skills. There was areally friendly and helpful atmosphere and lots of real hands on experiences with shelter building, fire lighting, food preparation and more. We would thoroughly recommend this course to anyone who enjoys the outdoors – well run and very helpful and friendly”.

- Pete

“I was a bit dubious to start with, but can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of the day. Built a shelter from branches and leaves, lit a fire using flint and steel, prepared a pigeon with our bare hands, carved spoons from hazel logs. Really great fun, rewarding and strangely very relaxing – a great way to get away from it all for a day. Would love to do more!”

- Nick

“Great communication by by Adam and Elly. The travel instructions where perfect. The hospitality was great. Warmly welcomed and given a clear run through of the days activities. It became very clear that Adam and Elly are very passionate about providing a professional service. Their knowledge is fantastic, and they know how to look after their clients. The day began with a really interesting forage. It was really great looking at loads of plants & berries finding out about healing properties, etc and learning so much about trees wood and the natural world around. Eventually we went back to base camp which was fantastic. We prepared pigeon and all the berries and fungi. Wow. What a feast.!

A great day out, but weekends are also available. A must for anyone who wants to learn about real food, and so much more. thanks for a great day. Check out the website for loads more details. I loved it”.

- Simon

“Great Fun Day , very informative and the pigeon lunch was fantastic. Give it a go, still smelling of smoke after lighting fires with a couple of sticks ;-)) , great present . Thank you”.

- Gareth

“I had a wonderful day with Hands On Bushcraft that I will remember always. A very well-paced course with excellent instruction, motivation and encouragement by the leaders. I learnt how to prepare pigeon and the meal prepared with it was amazing. Still smiling. Can’t wait to put my skills into practice. Thank you very much.”

- Heather

“A friend and I signed up to the “Essential Bushcraft Weekend” and what a weekend it was! Shelter building, fire lighting, wild game preparation and a host of other bushcraft skills. Adam, Ellie and Stuart were fantastic hosts and found the right balance between tuition and letting you find out for yourself. I hope to return for another course with Hands on Bushcraft in the future.”

- Tom

“What can I say!? I had a fantastic weekend with my friends, doing what I don’t do enough of – bushcrafting. Adam, Ellie and Stewart were fantastic hosts, with a plethora of knowledge that was easily absorbed. This was my second visit to Hands On Bushcraft, this time bringing my friends along. The instructor team catered for all our varying experience and we all took away some great skills. Highly recommended!!”

- Dave J

Product Description

Spend the week in the woods weaving, carving and crafting utensils, cups and containers from natural materials. Each day you will be introduced to a new craft and gather the raw materials needed to make the craft item. Our expert instructors will take you through how to use the various woodman’s tools such as axes, draw knives, gouges and carving knives that make crafting these items possible.

An overview of what you will learn during these week course:

Safe use knives, axes, saws and specialists carving tools, including various cuttingtechniques

Tree felling techniques using a saw and axe

Hazards when felling a tree

De-limbing and pruning a felled tree

Splitting using an axe

Splitting using wedges

How to make sturdy splitting wedges

Making of a bucksaw

Making of a bowsaw

Sharpening techniques for knives, axes and specialist tools

Bark removal for containers

Making various bark containers

Barks for natural cordage

Roots for natural cordage

How to get the most out of your cordage

Making reverse twist cordage

Fundamentals of carving with green wood

Carving using an axe

Carving with a knife

How to carve a spoon, spatula or ladle

Advanced carving techniques

Carving with gouges

How to carve a traditional kuksa or noggin cup from green wood

How to finish off your carved item (sanding/ oiling / waxing)

Sourcing materials for weaving

Weaving with brambles

Weaving with willow

How to identify various trees and plants and their many uses

How to weave a basket

How to identify various trees and plants and their many uses

Your Week Wednesday 9.00 – Sunday 16.00

Arrive at Hands on Bushcraft

You’ll be welcomed by one of our instructors and guided into the woodland to our basecamp where you will be given a safety briefing before being handed the tools you will be using during the week.

Day 1 – Tree felling and tools

Our instructor will take you out into the woodland and talk you through the selection process of felling a tree. You will guided through the safety aspects of felling a tree including safety zones, kickback and how to deal with a hung up tree.You will then get the chance to use saws and axes to fell a tree. Once the tree had been felled the next task will be to prune and de-limb it, the various branches and off cuts will be used later on in the week. As the day progresses you’ll move onto using some of the off cuts to make a frame saw and bow saw from of which you will use for the remainder of the course and is yours to take home. The end part of the day you will look at how to look after your axes and knives by sharpening them. Our instructors will guide you through how to get the best edge on your tool and talk about the various designs of axes, knives and saws for woodland work.

Day 2 – Bark containers and natural cordage

From the felled tree from day 1 you will harvest the bark, the aim here to remove a large sheet of bark for use in making your containers. Our instructors will first guide you through how to remove the bark using a knife and a spud (wooden chisel like tool) that will aid in the removal of the bark. Once you have your sheet of bark the next stage will be to decide the style of container you want to make from it, there will be a number of containers on display for you to get inspiration from. Our instructors will then take you through harvesting the materials to make natural cordage from, your will be looking at barks to make reverse twist cordage and roots, these will be used to stitch you containers together with. The outcome of these day to to get you used to work with natural materials and your hands, and hopefully you’ll walk away with a couple of containers.

Day 3 – Spoons, Spatulas and ladles

This day is an introduction into carving with green woods, after a recap on tool safety, you’ll head back out to the felled tree to harvest some useful pieces from the limbs and truck for you spoons, spatula and ladles. Our instructors will then demonstrate 2 techniques: carving with an axe and knife and the second just knife and saw. It’s then over to you to design and carve a spoon under the watchful eyes of our instructors. In the afternoon we’ll then build on what we cared in the morning session to look at ladles and spatulas, looking at curved pieces of wood and using our minds eye to see the potential utensil within.

Day 4 – Kuksa’s & Noggin cup

This day will focus on advanced carving of larger pieces of work. You will spend the day learning and carving traditional Swedish kuksa & noggins. We will once again visit the fell tree to harvest our materials from. This time we will be looking for larger pieces of timber to use. Our instructors will guide you through using axes and wedges to split the logs in half evenly and before taking it back to the craft zone to design the kuksa / noggin cup. Our instructor will demonstrate using a bowl mate and gouge to remove the inner bowl material from your kuksa before takin the axe out once more to remove the waste material from the outside of the cup. By the end of the day you will have carved a traditional Swedish kuksa and begun the sanding process.

Day 5 – Basket weaving

The final day will be spent learning how to weave a basket from willow and other natural materials such as brambles. Our instructor will guide you through the entire process from start to finish weaving alongside you. You will be whaling, whipping and twisting your way through the day to produce a basket or bowl from willow.

Course finishes

All good thing must come to an end, time to pack and head of back to home. Come back soon though.

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